WAUSAU — With no funding available in the 2018 budget, officials from Wausau’s parks department are asking to put construction plans for a city dog park largely on hold until 2019.
Advocates for the park had hoped the park would be open this year. But preliminary estimates released in early February show the park is expected to cost $131,631 to construct, and there is no money budgeted for that in the city’s current budget.
Meanwhile, members of the activist Facebook group WausDog have formed a Wausau Dog Park steering committee to assist city officials in making the park a reality. Parks Department officials are recommending city leaders spend 2018 working with the citizens group to determine a final design, allocate public vs. private costs, develop a private park operational entity and determine associated construction and maintenance costs for the 2019 operational and capital improvements budgeting process.
The 2-acre parcel, located at 224 S. Fourth Street, was selected in February over three alternate sites scattered around the city and is subject to DNR approval due to necessary environmental remediation of the land.
The Parks Department is also citing staff limitations in its request to delay the dog park. Longtime Parks Director Bill Duncanson detailed his workload in a Feb. 6 memo distributed to members of the parks and recreation committee. Duncanson is retiring this spring; his replacement has not yet been named.
Duncanson, who divides his 40-hour work week evenly between city and county duties, wrote that he has been devoting 10 of the city’s weekly 20-hour share to the city’s riverfront development, with more than a dozen additional projects underway.
In his memo, Duncanson asked community leaders to “exercise restraint in assigning additional projects or tasks” to the department.
